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The Jim Travis Story
Hot rodders, the so-called hooligans, didn't hang out in bars, they hung out at speed shops and drive-ins; drive-ins to find out who was going faster and speed shops to learn how to go faster.
Jim Travis met his future wife, Deloris, by cruising the drive-ins. Deloris went to Whittier High School and moonlighted as a carhop at George's Drive-In in Pico Rivera, California, plus Jim hung out at Automotive Specialties in Montebello that sold new and used speed equipment. It had the allure of burning rubber and a trace of fuel in the air with two owners who were skilled fabricators, mechanics, and most importantly—racers.
Jim probably made a nuisance of himself, but owners Jerry Eisert and Bill Fowler took a liking to him and introduced the young man to the hot rod world of Bonneville and Indianapolis. Because of that initiation, Jim eats, sleeps, and drinks hot rods. Actually he lives on bologna sandwiches, sleeps above his shop, and until a short time ago, drank Pepsi.
Jim would later go on to chop one of the most hammered '34 Ford coupes, racking up more miles on the Salt than a cab driver in Fargo, North Dakota—we're talkin' Bonneville baby!
Jim is also a highly respected and sought-after restorer of historic race cars. Between 1991 and 1999, Jim restored 28 race cars of distinction, including the late Jack Chrisman's (Art's uncle) chopped Hemi-powered '29 Model A sedan, plus Mickey Thompson's four-engine Challenger 1 Streamliner and the Assault, and Mickey's single-engine Pontiac dragster that looks more like a Bonneville Streamliner than a streamlined dragster. Read on.
Jim Travis
Jim Travis of Whittier, California, was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania (home of Zippo lighters), in 1934, but his grandfather, who was in the Spanish American War with Teddy Roosevelt, contracted Malaria and was told to move to a warmer climate. Jim's grandmother had a brother who lived in Montebello, California, so the whole family moved to the racing town.
Jim rode in his dad's '34 Dodge four-door and Jim's mom in Grandpa's new '47 Olds to California. When he got here, Jim hit the shop classes with both hands at Montebello High School: "I took metalworking, and in radio shop I made a one-tube crystal set (which needs no battery or power source but runs on power from radio waves using a high antenna), machine shop, and auto shop.
When Jim turned 16 he found a '37 Plymouth coupe at one of the garages that he used to deliver papers to for $70. He sold his bicycle for the down payment and gave his paper route to his brother. To pay for the Plymouth, Jim started working at some of the gas stations that he used to deliver papers to. Of course they all had lube racks and tools but all that free equipment couldn't save the Plymouth. "It didn't take me long to blow it up," Jim laughs.
The car Jim had through the remainder of his two years of high school was a '31 Fordor, which his dad saw for sale on the bulletin board at work. Jim paid $60. He had to upholster it, and make a top for it. The roof fabric was gone when he bought it, which is why the interior was no more. Taking various shop classes, Jim worked on the car in school. Not exactly a girl-magnet but it was wheels and, for some reason, the too-many-door Model A landed in the high school yearbook. Jim graduated in 1953.
When he got out of school he worked at a gas station. There was a '40 Ford Tudor for sale. Jim bought it after selling the Model A, which sat on the street for years till it finally got hauled to the junkyard. He started drag racing the '40: "I was doing a lot of street racing. I ran it at Santa Ana in 1954 with the Flathead V-8 with two carburetors and nothing else. That was back in the days when they drag raced four abreast.
"I wanted something more powerful. I was hanging out at Automotive Specialties. The more I hung around guys with cars in high school and guys like [owners] Bill and Jerry (Bill Fowler and Jerry Eisert) the more I learned about working on cars. In Pennsylvania cars were only to get you back and forth to church and to work. My mother drove in Pennsylvania but she never drove when she moved to California.
"This police officer came to our club meeting one night and he had this association over in Maywood called the Police Officers Car Club of America; I still have a decal on my toolbox. He wanted clubs to race off the street, not on the street. He had a track built on vacant lot on the corner of Slauson Avenue and Eastern Avenue in Maywood near the Chrysler assembly plant and the Lincoln/Mercury plant. He got Bethlehem Steel to donate the land where we raced."
Tweedy Pie Got the Olds
"Bill Fowler set me up! I was racing my '40 sedan with an Olds engine, I was spitting out gearboxes, rearends, and drive axles. I'd have to take it to Automotive Specialties to get it fixed. I was working for U.S. Rubber and I had to have a way to get to work. One night Fowler and I were out cruising the boulevard and we went up to Tiny's Drive-In and a '34 three-window, full-fendered coupe pulled in. I didn't know Bill was setting me up. He said 'Jim you ought to have a car to get back and forth to work and you should have a car for racing. Every time you blow that SOB up on a Saturday night or Sunday, you have to have it towed into our shop and we have to bust our butts to get it done by Tuesday so you can go to work.' I said, 'What do you have in mind?' 'You know, a coupe like that '34 that just pulled in, or a roadster.' 'If you could find me a roadster, I'd buy it.' 'I happen to know that a bunch of kids tore a '29 Model A all apart and they've lost interest in it. You can buy it for a $150.' 'SOLD!'"
"A couple days later Jerry Eisert had the Model A piled in the back of his '40 Ford pickup. When the gaskets disbanded, the Flathead was taken out of the five-window. I went and got the engine and put it in the '40 sedan and sold it."
When Jim first got the roadster it didn't have an engine. "I had a girlfriend who had an extra garage and I started working on it at her house." Jim tried to stuff the Olds in his new roadster but soon realized that there was no way to put headers on it so he pulled the engine back out. Ed "Big Daddy" Roth bought it and put the Olds in "Tweedy Pie", a '23 Model T roadster.
Jim had a nothing-special '34 Ford Flathead V-8 given to him that he put in the Model A bone-stock roadster "just to get it running till I got a paintjob on it. It's always been one color for the last 55 years, Goldenrod Yellow. I probably had probably two or three different Flatheads in that roadster over the years." Jim still has that Model A roadster.
"In 1956, I heard Bill and Jerry were going to go to Bonneville. I asked if I could go along. 'You can but you buy one tank of gas, chip in on the motel, and you'll have to sleep on the floor. '"
Jim and Bob Opperman were riding in Kay Kimes' Buick (Kimes later designed the body and chassis of the "Lead Wedge", an electric Land Speed record holder that went 139 mph with Jerry Kugel driving) following Eisert's pickup. Kimes had a belly tank with Ed Johnson's Nailhead Buick in it with six Stromberg carburetors: "Eisert was driving his '40 Ford pulling a single-axle trailer with the belly tank on it he had a healthy Flathead in it. We're out there in the middle of nowhere it's midnight; just north of Ely, Nevada, we're doing 55. There's a set of headlights coming up pretty fast. The guy was about to pass us on this two-lane road, he turned out to be Tom Beatty with his '40 Ford pickup with a Caddy in it, towing his tank. (Beatty would set a "C" Lakester record of 211.88 at Bonneville that week.) Jerry put his foot in it and wouldn't let Tom over. Those two guys were drag racing down the two-lane a couple of miles before Beatty passed us."
In The Army Now
One of Jim's shop teachers in the Army Reserve encouraged his students to join. Jim did and while on his two-week summer training (he had graduated from high school by then) he'd upset one of the officers enough that Jim was told he was to report for the draft. Knowing that he had to act fast, Jim enlisted before the draft notice came through and it worked. He was ultimately sent to West Point, New York. Mind you, Jim wasn't at West Point as a cadet, he was an Army enlisted man who repaired radio equipment, public address systems, and telephones for two years until his discharge.
Jim and Deloris were married two weeks before Jim went into the service. Deloris went back to Highland Falls New York just outside of West Point to join Jim for a brief visit before returning home to give birth to their second son, Wage.
Never one to lay around the barracks on weekends, Jim made good use of his time at West Point, and it wasn't spit and polish. Jim and fellow soldier Orv Schultz had a shop doing engine conversions putting Chevy engines in Flathead Fords (on the side naturally) doing a little street racing, plus racing at the drags at York, Pennsylvania, on a Saturday night, and also at Newberg, New York.
"A guy at the shop wanted to trade me his 1948 F-100 Ford pickup with a Flathead in it for my '50 Plymouth. I found out that the Texaco Testing Laboratories was selling some reconditioned '54 Olds engines for $100. So I bought one with a Hydro and put it in that pickup. We started racing it at the dragstrips. I went to York, Pennsylvania, and cleaned everybody's plow with the automatic."
Automotive Specialties is where Jim learned there was an Indy—the Indianapolis 500. "When I went down to Bill and Jerry's the day of the race, you couldn't say a word because they were listening to the race on the radio."
Out of the service, Jim was initially working at a 76 gas station and hanging out at Automotive Specialties. Bill Fowler had left Jerry Eisert and went to work for Frank Arciero Racing then ultimately for Dan Gurney in a small shop in Costa Mesa in 1962.
"I found out they were going to Indy in 1963. I asked Bill, 'If I come back to the Speedway, do you think you can find me work?' 'We'll see,' he said." (Jim was separated from Deloris who was killed in an auto wreck in 1965.) By that time, Jim had a Ford Sedan Delivery with "L.A. Roadsters Tow Car" plus Travis Automotive lettered on the side.
"I drove it back to Indy with a mattress in the back and my toolbox. I was walking back to the garage area one night with Dan and Bill when Bill handed me a tray of tools. I put the tools away in the garage and cleaned up the place. I ended up working in the garage while wearing my L.A. Roadsters jacket. The guard just assumed that I belonged there and never asked me for a badge. I worked on Gurney's Lotus for a couple of weeks. Dan had crashed [in practice] and we had to take another tub and take all the parts off of it, plus the bladders for the fuel and switch them over. Gurney did not have any help from Colin Chapman (Lotus founder)," Jim adds. "We weren't allowed to touch the engines; they came in a crate from Ford already dyno-tuned for 500 miles. The PR guy from Ford asked Dan, 'Who's that guy eating all our sandwiches and drinking all our Pepsis? Get rid of him. '"
While the PR guy needed a lesson in tact, it mattered not because Jim (who wasn't paid nor did he expect any for his efforts) took part in getting the Lotus back on the track, plus hot rodder Dan finished the 500 miles in Seventh Place. "I went to Indy for the experience," Jim says.
It was like old home month because the garage area was crawling with hot rodders from the L.A. area who Jim knew. He next knocked on Ermie Immerso's garage door. Immerso was a card-carrying 200-miler at Bonneville in 1956 when he built and drove a belly tank to 213.190 screaming miles per hour.
"I'm looking for work. I'll work for free, I just want the experience," Jim told Immerso. He said, "I certainly need the help." "I helped him for about a week; Paul Russo the driver never qualified the car. Ermie and I stayed friends until the day he died. Then I worked on an old Kurtis of Ozzy Olson from Denver Colorado. His driver was Don Freeland. The last day of qualifying Freeland blew the motor all over the track at 9 o'clock in the morning. They put it in the garage. We replaced one broken motor with one good motor but we were in line when the gun went off and qualifying was over. I watched the race and then I drove home."
Jim's brashness got him in a place many of us only dream about, Gasoline Alley, but his ability kept him there for a month. Not too shabby for a guy with a mattress in the back of his wheels for a hotel room. After returning from Indy, Jim opened up a shop, Travis Automotive, on Whittier Boulevard.
Enough of Spectating
But it was always in the back of his mind. He called his friend Opperman about how the Ford did at Bonneville. "Opperman told me Jerry and Bill went to Bonneville (in 1957) with the blown Cadillac in the coupe and Stricker drove it. Stricker had it until 1970; it just sat in his garage.
The coupe changed hands a number of times before Jim acquired it, but it was Jim who got the car to handle and drive safely: "The coupe was a mediocre handling car at best," Bill Fowler says. "Jim, by reworking the front steering geometry, was able to kill the lift that the car was getting. He took all the bumpsteer out of it, we didn't even know what the term 'bumpsteer' meant at the time. It started going down the racetrack pretty straight after that."
"I drove the '34 mostly at the drag races and the thing was absolutely perfect but when I drove it at El Mirage. The handling problem reared its head and the car began to lift in the rear and it would start pirouetting on the front cross spring; it definitely wanted to hunt. Jim got it to handle."
Jim, a member of the Gear Grinders, ran his faithful A-Bone roadster almost into the ground from 1961-68 at El Mirage, at the quarter-mile drags, and the SCTA half-mile drags at Riverside Raceway where he set four records.
That wasn't a typo! SCTA went drag racing in the winter months at Riverside and Lions Drag Strip when the dry lakebed of El Mirage became a lakebed. Plus, Jim and racers like Al Teague (the multiple record holder who went 409.978 in 1991) went to a huge dry lake, 60 miles long in Laguna Salada in the Sonoran desert of Baja, where Jim set a record of 110 mph in the Street Roadster Class.
Jim got to Bonneville only to find out he couldn't run the A in the Street Roadster Class there, only at El Mirage and the drags. They put him in Gas Roadster, which is a highboy with the engine set back into the cowl. "I ended up putting all those guys on the trailer and sending them home by Saturday (the end of Speed Week). I had the record of 124 mph with my 3/8x3/8 Flathead."
The Coupe
"Jerry Eisert built a 1/2x1/2 Ford Flathead V-8, put it in the '34 coupe, and ran it on 90 percent nitro at all the local dragstrips. They painted it red and put Automotive Specialties on the hood, but Richard Stricker still owned the car."
Jim painted the '34 coupe blue and white as soon as he got it in 1970: "I didn't like solid red. I ran it in 1971-73. I got the record with the Flathead, the same engine that was in the roadster. I had to redo the rollbars to make it legal, and I had to move the fuel tank to the nose because you couldn't have it next to the driver.
Then I went to Dean Moon and Fred Larsen (Moon Equipment) and we started talking about a front-mounted blown Chevy. I took the blower off of Stricker's Cadillac engine and put it on the Chevy engine. I rebuilt Moon's engine in his roadster and he gave me everything I needed and Larsen picked out the parts for the blower setup. That's when I started running a blown Chevy in 1976 at Bonneville. In 1978 I hurt the motor, so I went down into Wendover and bought a junkyard motor, put my blower, oil pan, oil pump everything on the junker. So now the pistons are flush with the top of the deck. I was told to build the engine with 7:1 compression because of the supercharger. I ran it on straight alcohol. I ran 187 mph on that $20 motor. I got Bill Miller (Bill Miller Engineering, Carson City, Nevada) in to make me some rods and repaired the broken engine using them so the pistons were flush with the deck. I started going 190. I started learning a lot more about the 300-inch Chevy and ran 230 mph. The record was 238 and I never got closer than 230. I probably had 50 or 60 runs well over 200 mph, but that doesn't count unless you break a record—you have to break a record in order to get into the 200 MPH Club."
Salted Pumpkin Seed
Jim wanted to bring back another famous old race car originally built by Bill Burke: the "Pumpkin Seed" that went 205.949 with a 156-inch Falcon engine in 1959. Then Mickey Thompson purchased the Streamliner to test his Pontiac four-banger Tempest engines. Danny Thompson, Mickey's son, had taken it to the Alhambra High School Auto Shop where Mickey went to school. Jim checked on it over a seven-year period. Finally the school wanted it out. It was in pretty sad shape and Jim offered to buy it from Danny. The concern was the car was in pieces, so before stuff came up missing, the timing was right to get it out of there. "No deal," Danny says. After all the work Jim had done for the family, Danny gave the Streamliner to Jim. Jim not only restored the Challenger but the "Assault" Pontiac-powered dragster that Mickey set 12 new world records in May 1960 at March Air Force Base.
While it had possibilities, a new 'cage was needed, the frame had to be replaced and stretched 2 1/2 feet because it had held the six-cylinder Ford Falcon engine. (Mickey built the aluminum body.) Right off the trailer in 1999 at Bonneville Jim set a new record of 217.586 mph with the "Pumpkin Seed" (named as such because it looked like one) powered by a GMC-6. Then in 2004 it went 253.563 with the Ardun-Ford V-8 and became the World's Fastest Ardun. How's that for an old racer about to be thrown in the trash?
At the same time Jim was thrashing to get the Streamliner ready for Speed Week, Steve Chrisman called and asked, "Do you want to do my dad's car?" Steve's dad was Jack, Art's uncle. Jack and Art drag raced a rather harmless-looking (but chopped ) '29 Model A two-door in the late '50s that was anything but. It was a nitro-burning A/Fuel Coupe that, at its peak, it did 129 mph in the quarter-mile. Of course the answer was "Yes!" And so he's said "yes" 28 times to restoring historic race cars.
Jim's seven children can be proud of their dad for all he's achieved, including going 203.502 to gain entry in the 200 MPH Club at age 64. The same year, in 1998, Jim was inducted in the Dry Lakes Hall of Fame in Buellton, California; the late Don Francisco nominated Jim for the honor.
Jim wanted to acknowledge the influence Art Chrisman, Don Ferguson Sr., and Bill Fowler had in his path to success when it came to racing, plus the assistance they gave to the many race cars that Jim has restored over the years and life in general.


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Notebook Experiments: Will Zoo Maps Keep My Child Busy?
Experiment: Can a few printed out zoo maps keep my child busy for an afternoon?
Experiment Taken From: Notebook Entry 06.19.08
Materials Needed: Please see Let's Explore for specific directions on how to complete this experiment. I printed out the zoo maps that Let's Explore had suggested along with maps from our own local zoos for my son to look at. I wished we had a color printer to print these out, but Ethan still was able to visualize where all the animals were in the zoo.
Results: I planned this activity the day after we went to the zoo so all of the exhibits were fresh in his mind. At first he copied the maps and used those as a template for his own map. I then asked him to make a map of his very own imaginary zoo and he filled this with the traditional zoo animals. I challenged him a little and asked where the dinosaur exhibit was and he looked at me like I had two heads, "Um, mom...dinosaurs are extincted." This is when I stressed that it was an imaginary zoo and he could fill it with whatever he wanted. That is when he really let loose on his map and created some interesting exhibits like a squid exhibit, a special T-Rex exhibit, and some animals that I can't even pronounce.
Just like our grocery store experiment, we also wrote the zoo words out and I had him practice on his writing. I am trying to encourage this as much as I can so he will have a great start to his first year at elementary school.
Once we completed this, I told Ethan that he could build a zoo out of the Little People sets that we had. He was very quiet for an hour while I worked and then told me that I could come downstairs. "Ticket please, ma'am." Every toy in the world was out and lined up for an exhibit. I applaud the effort, and silently cringed as I saw every toy bin dumped to build the masterpiece.
Conclusion: This was a wonderful activity to foster creativity, build our writing skills, and also kept my son relatively quiet for an afternoon. I did have some clean-up on my hands, but building a zoo can sometimes create a bit of a mess. Many thanks to Let's Explore for inspiring me as a parent!
I am so excited to open our Notebook Experiments up to everyone and I hope that you will be able to participate this week or in weeks to come! I will be posting this each Thursday so please mark your calendars if you plan to participate. You can post your entries at any time throughout the week and then leave your entry in the links below.
We have this handy banner that you are more than welcome to use, but it is not a requirement! It is just something you can add to add a little sparkle to your entry.
Rules for Participation:
1. Choose anything from any of our notebook entries (past or present) to do with your family. We have hundreds of bookmarked links of crafts, ways to save money, and organizing ideas.
2. Complete an experiment from the notebook and share about it on your blog or website. We would love to see pictures of what you accomplished or a detailed description of how your projects turned out. Please include a link to this entry, a link to the original posting of the entry (at the original crafster's blog), and (to help us relocate the project) the date or link of the notebook entry where you found it. You can use the same formatting as our entries or you can just include that information in your post in your own unique way!
3. Post a link below. Please include your name or blog name & a fast description of your project. Example- MomAdvice (WHO bread)
I can't wait to see what you create and what you find inspiring!
Labels: Notebook Experiments, Things To Do

subset: commoncrawl


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Book review: Sisters on Bread Street by Frances Brody
Born and raised on Bread Street in a working class area of Leeds, teenagers Julia and Margaret Wood are battling devastating poverty but worse is yet to come… it's 1914 and war is only months away.
Written as a 100th birthday tribute to her mother Julia McNeil, who lived on Bread Street until the age of eleven and was an avid reader, letter and diary writer, Frances Brody's gritty and compelling story is based on Julia's own childhood experiences.
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Hide AdOriginally published as a Frances McNeil novel, Sisters on Bread Street brings to vivid life the tragedies and triumphs, delights and disasters of surviving hardship and wartime in the early part of the 20th century.
With the threat of war looming large over the city, 15-year-old Julia Wood and her 18-year-old sister Margaret are having to draw on their natural resources and resilience to keep their heads above water.
Their mother died a few years ago and her last words to her daughters were: 'You're the Wood sisters, strong as your name, strong as an oak.'
But life is particularly cruel for the Wood family… angry feelings about foreigners have reached boiling point and their German-Jewish father's search for work proves hopeless, particularly after a bunch of local boys give him a beating on the street.
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Hide AdEntrepreneurial Julia – her quick wit has given her the nickname 'Miss Repartee' on the market stalls – is left to keep the family afloat by hawking home-made pies on the streets of Leeds.
Margaret, meanwhile, a girl with beauty that turns heads, is serving out an apprenticeship with a local milliner and has become an eager new member of the suffragette set.
Clever and resourceful, Margaret considers herself to be an 'exceptional' young woman and seeks a fast way out of the daily grind by pinning her hopes on marrying her rich suffragette friend's handsome journalist son Thomas Turner.
But as the war rages on, it is left to Julia, who proves to be just as 'exceptional' as her sister, to discover the true meaning of courage and family as she holds on to the promise of a better life ahead.
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Hide AdBrody, author of the Kate Shackleton mysteries, has her finger firmly on the pulse of what it meant to be a young working class woman fighting poverty and prejudice in a tough city community during the First World War.
Her vibrant, authentic characters, from the enchanting Wood sisters to the cast of local shopkeepers, publicans and street hawkers, are all beautifully and sensitively drawn and speak loudly of the close community spirit that helped struggling families to survive in wartime.
Brimming with warmth, humanity, emotion, romance and drama, this is a story that will enchant, entertain and enlighten.
(Piatkus, paperback, £8.99)


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Can you celebrate Black History by competing for a pageant crown? This is the second in Kimberly Brown's series on Negro History Week.
When you think of pageants, you might not envision serious historic preservation.
But since the Association for the Study of African American Life and History established Negro History Week in 1926, the organization has sponsored and encouraged varied forms of public outreach activities to spark interest in the examination and celebration of the Black past. Pageants, among other public programs, figured into the Association's engagement strategy to carry out its mission of educating the masses, particularly the youth.
Pageants were commonly incorporated into Negro History Week festivities held by local branches of the Association (which also included parades, breakfasts, banquets, speeches, exhibits, musical theater, poetry readings, and more). They reflected the significant impact of women's leadership within The Association and its mission of extending Black history into the larger public sphere.
But "Miss Negro History Week" pageants weren't all the same.
In Sylvia Tucker's case, there was no staged pageant. It was simply her labor to advance her Detroit, Michigan, branch that earned her the designation. During the 1930s and 1940s, it thrived under her leadership as she secured significant financial support for the cause. With her leadership, the group amassed 1,500 members and she established branches in nearby cities. Dr. Woodson himself praised her fundraising expertise. Tucker's countless lectures across the region and other achievements within the organization led people to address her as "Miss Negro History Week."
While Tucker's title came without a staged event, the Association also coordinated extravagant pageants that brought Black history to life. In February 1930, The Afro American newspaper announced a "brilliant pageant," which would open with "the Negro and the splendor of the Egyptian Court with her maid, with picturesque color effects."
No talent show, the pageant was a visual tour of the Black Experience. Performers acted both as enslaved persons auctioned off at Jamestown and bought by colonists, as well as freedmen confronting the stormy days of reconstruction. They demonstrated clashing viewpoints on racial adjustment as held by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois by hosting a debate between a skilled tradesman and a professional graduate.
The culmination of the production rested in the final scene during which a man, representative of the entire race, dramatically proclaimed his humanity: "He throws off the shackles, and with arms uplifted to heaven and eyes facing the east, cries forth in thunderous tones, 'I am the New Negro.'"
In 1955, Boston's Aristo Club marked its 30th Anniversary by expanding its work in Black history, sponsoring Negro History Week pageants. The governor issued a proclamation observing Negro History Week in most of the schools in the Boston School system.
The 1980s produced more pageants. In Georgia, a "Negro History Week" celebration in Alma and Bacon County was climaxed with a beauty pageant: "Miss Sephanie Deen, daughter of James E. Deen, was crowned Senior Miss Negro History Week." After the coronation, the audience sang "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."
At another celebration, competitors sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," spoke on the accomplishments of Blacks, recited "I, Too, Sing America," and recited "I Have a Dream." History and the present intersected as "the program ended with a prayer for the families of the murdered and missing children in the Atlanta area."
The pageant tradition continues today in examples such as Louisiana State University's annual Mr. and Miss Imani Scholarship Pageant.
While Dr. Woodson was a very serious man with an even more serious mission, he wholeheartedly supported programs, particularly those aimed at youth, which promoted the average person's interest in Black history and demonstrated their stake in Black progress. The Negro History pageants prove that public education and engagement can and should be enjoyable, interactive, and meaningful.
Kimberly D. Brown is a Ph.D. Candidate at Howard University and museum fellow.


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Do any of you have any favorite entries of mine that you think would be worthwhile to include in a small collection of things that I've written?
I've been putting together a portfolio of writing samples for this fellowship thing. I've had some real success getting freelance gigs, writing articles and blog posts for other people, so I've been in the mood to make some progress writing wise. I've just also been exhausted from some combination of colds, migraines, nausea, and boring job syndrome, which makes that difficult.
Maybe I'll post some poetry from when I was in high school! Or some essays I wrote for college… Free Content! Already written. Maybe I could do "This day in history"s with my old blog.
Or not, since my taste for public humiliation is somewhat limited. Somewhat.
Someone do something to piss me off so that I'll have something to blog about already. Jeez.


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Which way does air typically flow in a furnace? Put another way, does the filter usually sit before the incoming cool air reaches the burners or after?
I'm trying to figure out which way the air flow arrow should point on my air filters. There are a lot of web pages that almost answer this question but not quite.


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Call 231-724-3177 to inquire about the status of your tip. Have your tip number handy. If your tip leads to a person's arrest, you will be told how to collect your reward, without giving your name.
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Silent Observer is most interested in information about serious crimes. Tips about arson, drugs, burglary, criminal sexual conduct, robbery, murder, weapons, theft, vandalism and people with warrants are just some of the crimes Silent Observer would like to receive information.
Your information is immediately sent to the appropriate law enforcement agency for investigation.
Absolutely not. Callers can be assured that they will remain anonymous. No attempt will be made to figure out your identity.
If your information leads to the arrest of suspect(s) and the suspect(s) is bound over for trial, you are eligible for a reward. Reward amounts are based on the severity of the crime and how important your tip was to police. Reward amounts can range from $50 to $2,000.
Silent Observer has been around since 1972 and has a proven track record in keeping those with crime-solving information anonymous. We do not use Caller ID nor do we want your name or any other identifying information about you. But to make it all official, there is a law that went into effect on January 1, 2007 that legally protects the identity of Silent Observer informants.


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NewTek's seriously forward-thinking IsoCorder™ technology combines the capabilities of racks and racks of video capture equipment, providing multi-track, multi-format recording of up to four simultaneous channels. Record any combination of your finished show, a clean feed, raw source captures from any camera, or more, at full resolution—directly from the user interface.
15-channel Multi-camera Production
Connectivity for 4 SDI camera sources. Video playback from 2 DDRs—not just short clips with an overly restrictive frame count: we're talking full-length packages and whatever else you need. Digital media from 2 built-in graphic and sound slots. 2 network sources for sharing computer displays, wireless iOS devices, or any over-the-network source. And 4 M/E banks to stage live virtual sets, create real-time compositions and presets, and submixes that can act as upstream switchers (or secondary programs out).
Expanded Media Sources: Buffers and Network Inputs
Real-time 15-channel production is just the start. TriCaster 410 gives producers instant access to even more content in real time, without adding equipment or crew. Still and title buffers provide 15 bonus, "always on" sources. And enhanced network inputs support cloud video, streaming servers, remote cameras, remotely hosted clips, USB cameras and more, dramatically expanding content and programming possibilities without taking up a hardware input.
Audio Mixing
The TriCaster integrated multi-channel audio mixer is loaded with enhancements that raise the caliber of your shows' sound to the same professional, network quality as the visuals. Unprecedented routing, customization, control and flexibility—and further opportunities for sound configuration and delivery like simulcast audio, multi-language presentation, and mix-minus applications (such as Skype calls and phoners)—without the investment in scores of external hardware. If live control by an audio operator is what you want, you get full support for mixing from our iPad remote mixer app, the Avid® Artist Mix control surface, and other third-party audio control interfaces.
Visual & Motion Effects
TriCaster 410 has the most powerful integrated effects engine available in live production. From full-color, animated transitions with alpha channel and embedded audio, to real-time cloth dynamics, 3D video warping, and transformations with TransWarp effects and motion overlays; all the way to your own custom, branded effects using the included Animation Store Creator application, and real-time, multi-layered compositions with 4 M/E rows and motion effects. TriCaster 410 lets nothing stand in the way of getting the look you want or the professional presentation your organization demands.
Automation functions in TriCaster 410 help you experiment with more complex sequences but leave nothing to chance during a live production. Reduce on-air mistakes with macros—streamline real-time shot sequences that make the show look more sophisticated, but are too complicated to execute live and risk costly errors. Unlimited external control functions with MIDI sequencing enables show control of nearly any command, or offloading tasks to additional crew. Using hotspots, talent can trigger automated sequences requiring extraordinary timing with on-camera gestures, effectively controlling a segment without an operator. And add remotely controlled robotic cameras as input sources, without the need to add camera operators.
Virtual Sets
Even if your "set" is really a multi-purpose room or the corner of a studio, your viewers will not only see your professional brand shine through—they'll see any world you want to create, without the high cost or heavy construction. With TriCaster 410 system's virtual sets, you can elevate your look with realistic foregrounds and live moving backgrounds. Not just high-end studio looks either: take a panoramic of any location with your smart phone, or a 3D model from any universe you create, and make it your scene using our holographic LiveSet capability, bringing augmented reality that much closer to live. Add real-time energy to any virtual set with two live sources—each with overlay, all with transitions, sounds, 3D DVEs and effects. Live camera moves and shot changes during production bring your new location to life.
Social Media Publishing
With a brief setup beforehand and the real-time grab of a shot, generate second-screen content for sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter during the live show, and extend your brand to online and second-screen platforms—or share assets to common storage locations for instant access by others. Hey, set it all up with a macro and just push a button, and you've increased your program exposure without adding equipment, personnel, or lag time.
External and Third-Party Applications
Through our third-party developer network, TriCaster 410 supports an extended set of products that work directly with the system to provide innovative solutions and workflows in several different areas of your live production, including streaming, graphics, content and controllers. Our SDK enables developers and customers to tap into the power of TriCaster functionality, add applications that enhance the production workflow, and further extend integration with standard and custom installations. And our own suite of peripheral applications and hardware control surfaces rounds out the total solution.


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In DC, Gay Catholics Protest 'Fortnight for Freedom' Campaign
Gay Catholics in Washington, DC, staged a protest against the two-week-long "Fortnight for Freedom" staged by the U.S. bishops to promote the idea that religious liberty is under attack in the U.S.
The Washington Blade reports that the event was on George Washington University's campus, where a Fortnight for Freedom event was being held:
"Members of Catholics for Equality and Dignity USA sang hymns and held a large banner that read 'Bishops: We Need Pastors, Not Politicians, Your Antics are Hurting the Church' outside the Charles E. Smith Center on 22nd Street, N.W. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington was among those who spoke to the estimated 4,000 people who attended the gathering."
A spokesperson for the protesters explained the reason for the demonstration:
" 'We're here to provide an opposite viewpoint to the U.S. bishops' "Fortnight for Freedom campaign," said Joseph Palacios, director of the Catholics for Equality Foundation. He noted to the Blade that 67 percent — or $4 billion — of Catholic Charities' annual funding comes from state and federal government sources. 'They claim that they are being victims of religious liberty, when in fact the Catholic Church has probably more liberties than any organization in our country.' . . .
" 'This is all about election year politicking,' argued Palacios. 'This is a cover for the Catholic Church's issues on gay rights, on women's reproductive issues, on so-called religious infringement.' "
One of the protesters explained that the demonstration showed that not all Catholics support the bishops' campaign:
" 'Catholics are very divided in terms of their support for this conservative political agenda,' said Arlington resident Bob Miailovich as he stood outside the GWU rally. 'We have already met here though today some people who are into the more conservative agenda and they take offense at any public program that does not comport foursquare with what the bishops are teaching. As Catholics, it's a big church and it has a lot of divided opinion. We're not monolithic on these social issues.' "
–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry


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Touch Tour: Black is the Color of My Voice
About Touch Tour: Black is the Color of My Voice
Our Touch Tour enables blind or visually impaired customers to explore the set, props and costumes used in Black is the Color of My Voice.
The Touch Tour takes place 90 minutes before an audio described performance and lasts approximately 30 minutes. We also offer customers the chance to explore the theatres, although some backstage areas are inaccessible due to the nature of the buildings.
Touch Tours for blind or visually impaired people are free, but booking is essential.
You must be an Access Member and logged-in to book tickets for the Touch Tour. If you are not an Access Member and would like more information please visit our Access page.


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LOS ANGELES – He already has a Super Bowl ring, and now football star Donald Driver can add the "Dancing With the Stars" mirrorball trophy to his awards collection.
The Green Bay Packers receiver won the ABC dance show Tuesday. He and partner Peta Murgatroyd hoisted the glittery prize above their heads as streamers and confetti filled the ballroom.
Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins came in second place and Cuban actor William Levy finished third.
All three finalists earned perfect scores for their final performances Tuesday. Judges' scores combined with viewer votes determined the winner.
The entire cast of this season's show reunited for the two-hour season finale. Martina Navratilova, Gavin DeGraw, Jack Wagner, Jaleel White, Sherri Shepherd, Melissa Gilbert, Roshon Fegan, Maria Menounos and Gladys Knight were eliminated from the competition on previous episodes, but they all donned costumes Tuesday for one last dance. Knight did double performance duty, also singing "The Way We Were."
The next round of "Dancing With the Stars" will feature contestants from past seasons.


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Walking around here in the exposition hall on the A4Uexpo in Amsterdam, it is interesting how people try to get you into their booth. One way always works: having some sexy booth babes. Only nobody will remember what kind of product you are selling.
Still, it shows the 3 P's of the Internet work, as this particular booth is for an online poker website. They also publish a calendar per year. I got myself a signed calendar!


text: Echo Park enthusiast, colorful Californian, and fastest Glue Gun in the West, Crafty Cathy made her debut appearance on the Martha Stewart Show. Cathy schooled the perennial homemaker on how to create flowers out of raffia ribbon, while dazzling the audience with a gift. Cathy has been a fan of l.a.Eyeworks for some time now, and made sure to send us the great news. Check out heaps of Cathy's inspiring creation on her website. Thanks Cathy!


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Stefano Fioresi
Stefano Fioresi was born in Modena on 28 July 1965.
He attended the Venturi Artistic High School in Modena and qualified in 1983 as a commercial artist.
His artistic sensitivity, his uncommon technical gifts that became apparent at an early age and his great versatile powers of expression and execution enabled him to gain different types of artistic and professional experience, also at the international level. In 1984 he decorated part of the Palais de la Culture in Algiers. He subsequently made decorations on glass for large-scale interiors, which was an experience that gave him the technical skill required to take on major commissions. A few years later he depicted scenes from the great motor racing competitions on glass panels for the headquarters of the Modena branch of the automobile Club Italia. Since 1989 he has been pursuing successful career in the advertising industry.nAt the same time he has been active in the field of graphic art. His favourite themes have always been connected with his passion for cars. One particularly important piece of work from this period is a series of panels for the headquarters of Ferrari in Maranello that provides a comprehensive view of the buildings that make up the headquarters of the manufacturer of the car with the black horse logo (1990). From the end of the nineties his creative work took a new turn in the direction of an artistic search for new techniques and themes. By using his experience in the advertising industry and by carefully rereading the elements of pop art of the seventies and eighties the artist has been able to develop a style that reinterprets the syntactic and visual elements of mass communication to activate a creative approach to artistic expression in the direction of New Italian Pop Art.
The installation of Stefano Fioresi's "Passion and Glory" realized for OPEN2OO6 is a clever example of image marketing. In his purest pop style, the artist from Modena chooses from the mass information circuits an icon that has been topical for at least two thousand years: the icon of Christ, scorned and abandoned by his Father. This is a symbol full of meaning for the whole of contemporary society: Christian, non-Christian and lay. We live in times when, once again, religions are dividing peoples and laying more stress on separating than on uniting them, thus going against the basis of every faith. The charismatic face of Christ who, in death, epitomizes the condition of every human being who has ever trod this earth, sums up all the fears, uncertainties and fragility of people. Fioresi takes his suffering gaze and transposes it onto the faces of six cubes, stacked one on top of the other to form a kind of modern pyramid four metres high. Jesus raises his eyes while the nails pierce his hands. The obsessive reiteration of the scene repeats the theme of the work of art, there is no glory without pain. And the warning of that white face that seems to conquer space with a struggle reminds the man in the street of Heidegger's invitation "to go back out into the open, as the ancients did, if we want to find the divine". But our eyes, filled with technological images, have lost Erasmus's craving for faith. To return to the heavens we will have to build a tower far higher than the Tower of Babel, and maybe even try to get there on foot.
Anna Caterina Bellati


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By Joe Eaton and David Donald, The Center for Public Integrity
Second in a series
Judging by their bills, it would appear that elderly patients treated in the emergency room at Baylor Medical Center in Irving, Texas, are among the sickest in the country — far sicker than patients at most other hospitals.
In 2008, the hospital billed Medicare for the two most expensive levels of care for eight of every 10 patients it treated and released from its emergency room — almost twice the national average, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. Among those claims, 64 percent of the total were for the most expensive level of care.
But the charges may have more to do with billing practices than sicker patients.
A Baylor representative conceded hospital billing for emergency room care "did not align with industry trends," but said that the hospital since 2009 has reined in its charges.
The Texas hospital's billing pattern is far from unique. Between 2001 and 2008, hospitals across the country dramatically increased their Medicare billing for emergency room care, adding more than $1 billion to the cost of the program to taxpayers, a Center investigation has found. The fees are based on a system of billing codes — so-called evaluation and management codes — that makes higher payments for treatments that require more time and resources.
Use of the top two most expensive codes for emergency room care nationwide nearly doubled, from 25 percent to 45 percent of all claims, during the time period examined. In many cases, these claims were not for treating patients with life-threatening injuries. Instead, the claims the Center analyzed included only patients who were sent home from the emergency room without being admitted to the hospital. Often, they were treated for seemingly minor injuries and complaints.
While taxpayers footed most of the bill, the charges also hit elderly patients in the pocketbook, increasing the amount of their 20-percent co-payments for emergency room care.
Hospitals and federal officials say the rise has likely been caused by an increase in sicker patients seeking care in emergency rooms, more accurate billing on the part of hospitals, and an increasing number of options for patients who aren't as sick — options that include retail-based clinics and urgent care facilities. But the Center'sinvestigation found that the surge in billing also reflects lax government oversight, confusion about proper billing standards, and widespread payment errors that have plagued Medicare for more than a decade. And the data suggest that some hospitals are working the billing system — and its flaws — to maximize payments.
Dr. Donald Berwick, the immediate past administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which administers the Medicare program, said a small portion of the billing increase is likely caused by outright fraud, but in the majority of cases hospitals are legally boosting profits by targeting the vulnerabilities of Medicare's payment system. "They are learning how to play the game," Berwick said about the hospitals.
Hospital industry insiders say it's no secret that hospitals are pushing the limits to bill higher-priced Medicare codes, a practice known as upcoding. "There is such financial pressure to upcode," said Barbara Vandegrift, a health care consultant at Tennessee-based Quorum Health Resources. "It's 'wait until we get caught and we'll fight it at that point.' "
Few hospitals, however, are being scrutinized. Medicare officials are aware of the rising expense of emergency room billing for evaluation and management services, but the agency has downplayed the problem and done little to verify the accuracy of hospital emergency room charges. Instead, it has given hospitals a free hand to set their own billing policies, with little agency guidance and even less auditing.
Medicare lacks rules for hospital ER billing
Since 2000, hospitals have chosen among five codes to bill Medicare and other insurers for evaluating emergency room patients and coordinating their treatment. This hospital "facility fee," which can add millions of dollars to the hospital's bottom line in the course of a year, ranges from $50 to $324, depending on which code is chosen for any given case. It comes on top of physician charges.
The system dates back to a change in federal law requiring hospitals be paid a set fee for services, rather than a blanket payment based on the cost of providing care, which was meant to save the program money. Yet instead of developing specialized billing codes just for hospitals, CMS since 2000 has required hospitals to file claims using a set of codes developed and licensed for physician billing by the American Medical Association — so-called Current Procedural Terminology, or CPT, codes. The lack of specific hospital codes, or guidelines for how hospitals should use physician codes, has left the system open to broad interpretation by hospitals.
"All the hospitals looked at each other and said, 'OK, how are we going to do this?' To make a long story very short, we still have no guidelines," said Duane Abbey, a hospital billing consultant in California.
Medicare administrators acknowledge as much. Since 2000, CMS has repeatedly announced plans to develop new hospital evaluation and management codes, or at least provide national guidelines for hospital billing. But the agency has failed to deliver. Instead, CMS requires hospitals to develop their own guidelines for billing those codes designed for doctors. Some follow strict internal policies, Abbey and other hospitals billing consultants said, while others wildly inflate charges, regularly change their billing criteria, and sometimes fail to follow even their own lax internal policies.
"The whole issue of the E and M levels for the emergency department … is an absolute mess," Abbey said.
Chasing dollars
Left to develop their own billing rules, hospitals have flocked to higher paying emergency room codes. Leatrice Ford, an independent consultant in Louisville, Ky., who uses Medicare claims data to advise hospitals on their emergency room billing, said it's well known in the industry that many hospitals inflate their charges. But Ford said it's a tough sell for a consultant to convince hospitals their billing is too high. "In my experience hospitals are reluctant to give up their overpayments," Ford said. The reason, she said, is that Medicare and the contractors it employs to administer payments are not checking.
"I have never once seen or heard of anyone being audited or called on the carpet for their distribution of E and M codes," Ford said. "That's a standard audit for physician practices, but I've never seen a hospital get in trouble for it."
In 2008, more than 500 hospitals of the more than 2,400 in the database billed the two most expensive codes for more than 60 percent of patients. More than 100 billed the two most expensive codes for at least 70 percent of patients.
Some — like Baylor Medical Center in Irving — were even higher. In 2007, Yuma Regional Medical Center, a 369-bed nonprofit hospital in southwestern Arizona, billed the top two most expensive codes for eight of every 10 Medicare emergency room patients. Billing at the hospital made Yuma, Arizona, the nation's regional leader for the percentage of billing of the top two levels of E and M codes, far higher than metropolitan areas like New York City and Chicago.
Yuma's CEO Pat Walz, however, said the charges are accurate. When the Center first asked about the claims, Walz said elderly winter visitors have driven up the hospital's number of serious emergency room cases. Yuma claims data reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity, however, suggest the average age of the hospital's emergency room patients remained steady from 2001 to 2008 at around 77 years old.
Walz also conceded that the installation of Medhost, an electronic emergency department information system, was likely one of the most significant drivers of the hospital's push toward more expensive codes. Before Medhost, nurses and doctors wrote patient notes by hand, Walz said. Computerized charting captured much more of the work they actually performed, which he said resulted in higher E and M levels.
But Walz said the electronic system is not overcharging Medicare. Rather, it is simply helping the hospital make money from care that once fell through the cracks. "If you look at any industry — as it goes from human to electronic input, the same thing is going to happen," Walz said.
Walz said Medhost has paid for itself through increased billing, but he said the decision to install it was not financial. "We did it to improve the quality of patient care," he said. Medhost did not respond to requests for comment.
CMS: hospital billing increase "slight"
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has so far downplayed the spike of hospital billing. In 2011 comments published in the Federal Register, CMS said it noticed a "slight shift" toward hospital billing of more expensive evaluation and management codes. The agency said it also noticed that emergency room charges for the higher-level visits "seem to be trending upward year over year."
Presented with the Center's analysis, which shows a far more dramatic shift toward expensive codes, CMS declined interview requests. But in written responses to questions, the agency's press office said the trend is only "notable" over several years. Considered year to year, as the agency said it examined the data, the higher level codes increase at no more than 2 percent.
Further, the agency wrote that the trend may reflect more accurate coding by hospitals and physicians rather than upcoding. Indeed, the agency said its advisory panel, which is made up of physicians, hospital administrators and other hospital financial staff, told CMS that the rise in billing is a result of hospitals getting better at capturing their costs.
"They would argue that the costs were inadequately reflected in our data several years ago," the agency wrote, "so the increases we are seeing now are bringing the payment system to where it should have been all along."
Dr. Scott Manaker, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, a member of the panel, said there are a number of possible causes for the rise in high-level billing, including more accurate hospital coding. Manaker said he doubts upcoding is the major cause, but said it's impossible for the panel to determine without examining individual patient charts and hospital billing records, which it has not done.
Another panel member said hospital emergency room billing has not been a critical issue during meetings. "In my four years in the panel there has not been a lot of discussion of E and M leveling on the facility side," said Judith Kelly, director of health information management at Unity Health System in Rochester, N.Y. To address the issue, Kelly said CMS should issue hospital-specific billing codes or guidelines for emergency care. "When there is ambiguity, there are problems," she said.
In response to questions, CMS said some hospitals have been audited. But the agency said the process of auditing and seeking reimbursement of overpayment is "expensive and time consuming relative to the potential return that will be realized on individual claims for relatively low cost services."
But some question whether CMS contractors — who help administer Medicare payments — can effectively audit hospital billing. Without national billing guidelines, said Abbey, the hospital auditor, it would be difficult for CMS contractors to determine who is cheating the system. Indeed, he said they would need first to ask each hospital for a copy of its internal billing guidelines. "They should have one of their famous committees developing guidelines right now," Abbey said. "My sense is they aren't, but they should be."
A never-ending quest for billing guidelines
During the 12 years that CMS has allowed hospitals to set their own billing policies for E and M codes, a host of organizations have proposed national guidelines. So far, none of them have made the cut.
In 2002, the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the American Health Information Management Association, an association representing health information management professionals, formed an expert panel to develop guidelines for hospital emergency room billing at the urging of CMS. In 2003, the groups submitted detailed recommendations for a billing system that measured hospital emergency room care. The recommendations went nowhere. "It just died a slow death," said William Briggs, a nurse who represented the Emergency Nurses Association on the expert panel.
CMS has called the AHA proposal the "most appropriate and well-developed guidelines" available. Yet the agency has not required hospitals to follow them. Not long after the AHA proposed the guidelines, a CMS-funded outside study found a number of problems with the guidelines.
A separate small-scale study, however, suggested the guidelines save money. In 2009, the Ohio-based company Permedion, which reviews medical claims for state and federal agencies, found that 37 percent of a sample of Ohio Medicaid emergency room claims should have been coded at lower levels, based on the AHA guidelines. The remainder were in agreement with the guidelines.
The AHA remains one of the loudest voices pushing for guidelines, but it is discouraged over the long delay. "We keep asking them to issue national guidelines," said Nelly Leon-Chisen, the association's director of coding and classification. "We do it every year and they don't do anything about it."
By 2007, though, it appears CMS had effectively given up on releasing new guidelines. The effort "was proving more challenging than we initially thought," the agency wrote in the Federal Register.
Industry insiders say there are a number of reasons why the agency never established guidelines. Some suggested a working set of rules that accurately reflects costs for all hospitals may be impossible to develop. Others say CMS is reticent to sign off on an outside group's system, as it has with the American Medical Association, which licenses the use of the CPT codes it owns and administers.
In written responses to questions submitted by the Center, CMS said "it seems unlikely that one set of straightforward national guidelines could apply to the reporting of visits in all hospitals and specialty clinics." It also said the agency believes that "as a whole, hospitals have worked diligently and carefully to develop and implement their own internal guidelines that reflect the scope and type of services they provide."
Asked about the hospital shift toward billing more expensive codes, Roslyne Schulman, the hospital association's director of policy development, said she was unaware billing had risen at the rate revealed by the Center's data analysis, and could only speculate on the reasons without comparing billing to patient charts. Asked if hospitals were simply billing for levels of care they did not provide, Schulman said, "I would hope that would not be an issue."
Hospitals say patients are "sicker and older"
In 2008, Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital, a 276-bed hospital a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean, billed the top two emergency room codes for 80 percent of all patients, up from about 29 percent in 2001. Hospital spokeswoman Amy Sandoval said the hospital since 2001 has used the electronic charge system Optum Lynx to determine evaluation and management billing levels.
In a written response to questions about the hospital's billing, Sandoval said Optum reviewed the hospital's billing and found it within acceptable limits. Sandoval said "possible" reasons for the high level of billing include an older and sicker patient population, the intensive resources required to treat psychiatric patients before transfer, and a trend of less sick patients seeking care outside of emergency rooms to avoid long waits and high co-pays. The hospital, she added, is a level III trauma center, located within a mile of seven assisted-living centers and nursing homes.
Representatives from small-town hospitals and major urban trauma centers generally offered the same justification for their rising charges. These explanations could be accurate for individual hospitals, but they are not borne out in the national Medicare billing data analyzed by the Center. The average age of emergency room patients in data examined by the Center was 77 and remained constant from 2001 to 2008. The total number of emergency room claims rose 31 percent during that time, however, as compared to a less than 10 percent increase in Medicare beneficiaries, which suggests urgent care clinics have not sapped overall business levels.
Some of the rise could be accounted for by emergency room care advances. In the eight years from 2001 to 2008, advances in medical care allowed emergency rooms to treat patients without later admitting them to the hospital. Since the Medicare data the Center for Public Integrity examined includes only treat-and-release patients, these sicker patients would be included in the data more often in 2008 than in 2001. But some experts strongly doubt this accounts for the extent of the rapid rise.
Moreover, the ten most common "primary diagnoses" — the chief complaints for why patients seek care in emergency rooms — remained unchanged during the time period of the data reviewed by the Center. Although those top diagnoses including dangerous symptoms like chest pain and loss of consciousness, the list also included seemingly minor complaints like lower-back discomfort, urinary tract infections and limb pain.
But while the most common diagnoses remained constant, billing of the most expensive codes surged. Take the case of emergency room headaches. From 2001 to 2008, hospital billing of the top two evaluation and management codes for headache patients more than doubled to 43 percent. The number of tests and procedures doctors performed on headache patients also rose. In 2001, hospital emergency rooms billed an average of six revenue codes (which represent areas of the hospital where costs occur, including imaging, labs, and supplies) for headache patients, according to Medicare billing data. In 2008, they billed an average of nine.
In addition to changes in standards of care over those eight years, hospitals say they simply are seeing sicker Medicare patients than in the past. But some disagree.
Berwick, the former CMS head, said patients haven't changed. What's changed is the aggressiveness of how hospitals bill. "They are smart," Berwick said. "If you create a payment system in which there is a premium for increasing the number of things you do or the recording of what you do, well, that's what you'll get."
Dr. Stephen Pitts, an emergency physician and associate professor in the Emory University School of Medicine, examined data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, a well-established nationally representative survey of emergency department visits. Pitts found that between 2001 and 2008 emergency patients did not appear to be getting sicker.
"It's total nonsense," Pitts said of hospital claims that sicker patients have led to higher charges.
Emergency physician billing also rises
A more likely cause, Pitts said, is the pressure hospitals put on emergency room physicians to bill every patient at the highest rates possible. Emergency room salaries at many hospitals are tied in part to how much profit doctors generate per patient, Pitts said. From the business side, this makes sense. "If you don't bill maximally, your ER is going to die," Pitts said. But from a patient perspective, it means doctors perform more tests and procedures than they did in the past, which increases the costs of care.
Although hospital facility charges are separate from physician charges, billing and coding experts say the two are linked. And like hospital charges, emergency room physician charges for evaluation and management services are soaring. In 2008, emergency room physicians billed the most expensive code for 44 percent of patients, up from 27 percent in 2001, according to Center analysis of Medicare claims data.
The cost associated with this rise is substantial. In 2010, the top level physical evaluation and management code for emergency care cost the program nearly $1.6 billion, up 21 percent form 2008.
Unlike hospital billing, CMS requires that physicians follow American Medical Association criteria for billing emergency room evaluation and management services. The top level code 99285, for example, requires doctors to perform a comprehensive medical history, a comprehensive exam and engage in highly complex medical decision making.
Yet a number of probes have found physicians are over-billing the top-level code. A 2012 probe of physician billing of 99285 in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska found an error rate of almost 50 percent. The probe, performed by Medicare contractor Wisconsin Physicians Service Insurance Corporation, found that physician documentation did not support the 99285 level.
David McKenzie, the reimbursement director of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said upcoding is not to blame for the rise in physician charges. Emergency room doctors are simply getting better at documenting their work, and Medicare patients in general are getting sicker, McKenzie said. In addition, nurse practitioners and physician assistants are treating less sick patients who in the past would have been treated by doctors, which is skewing their numbers.
Evaluation and management of health care in seniors takes time, McKenzie said. "A broken leg in a 17-year-old football player is not the same as a broken leg in an 88-year-old diabetic."
CMS says rise unlikely caused by upcoding
In written comments, CMS said upcoding is unlikely to account for the rapid rise in hospital emergency room billing since the trend appears "to be consistent across hospitals and physicians." But billing at some hospitals is rising much faster than at others. Asked if the agency is monitoring hospitals, like Baylor Medical Center in Irving, Texas, with rates that were nearly twice the national average, CMS said it is inappropriate for the agency to discuss audits involving specific hospitals.
But Baylor Irving's president, Cindy Schamp, said CMS never questioned the hospital's 2008 evaluation and management code billing. In 2009, Schamp said, the hospital instituted new billing rules that led to fewer claims for the top two codes. She said the change was voluntary.
Asked if the hospital returned Medicare overpayments, Schamp said it has not. "To date, we have not made any payments back to Medicare," Schamp wrote in response to questions. "However, continuing to work to do the right thing, we feel it is appropriate to review."
Four months later, a Baylor spokeswoman said the review was complete. "We looked at a sample set of (emergency room) charges made at Baylor Irving during that time period to see if they were accurate in the context of the billing guidelines at that time," Nikki Mitchell wrote. "That is the appropriate way to review charges. In the review, no overcharges were found."


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Shiva the Detroyed Feminist locates a crumb of feminist hope amid a sea of feminism-crushing scientific studies and reality-assaulting dissonance:
I think this will win comment of next week:
This just blew open the "wall" theory. [ed: she wishes.]
sure, women may not be at the prime of their beauty in the future but they'll still be in prime fertility at , say, 45.
[ed: just wow.]
The schooling shall commence…
The wall is a function of women's looks, which are, evolutionarily-speaking, a proxy for women's fertility. Ovary transplant tech may extend fertility but it won't do a damn thing for aging women's declining looks. Men's eyes don't see women's ovaries, they see women's bodies and faces. Men are wired to respond sexually and emotionally to youthful female looks, not to a hidden working uterus. A 70 year old woman could be rejiggered to bear children thanks to the intervention of science, but she'll still look 70 years old, and so men won't be turned on by her. She will suffer the indignities of wall victimhood, having to settle for conceiving children with a turkey baster or a blind old goat who gets around on tennis balls. Tragically for feminists nursing delusions of sustained desirability, in the gene-governed sexual market where visual cues are men's primary information medium it's the proxies that matter, not the actual biowiring underneath.
There's really no point to explaining the facts of life to feminists and other assorted grievance groups with real reasons to fear and loathe the truth — beyond its entertainment value as a button-pusher — because in three weeks' time the same lot of them wander back into this happy hunting ground babbling the identical, debunked bromides all over again. Logic and reason hurt their wee egos for a brief spell, and then when enough time has passed for their self-medicated ids to baseline to normal and reconcile their cognitive dissonances, (say, ten minutes), they are right back to chanting pretty lies, sticking their fingers in their ears, and stamping their ascii feet. Never underestimate the lengths to which humans will lie to themselves and, consequently, to others to maintain an illusion of high sexual or social market value in the face of rapid deterioration or expendability.
If I had to put a number on it, I'd guess 80% of the human population is aggressively self-deceiving, with the number reaching close to 100% in backward societies and within certain ideological sects. With those numbers arrayed against you, it's fruitless to battle for hearts and minds. The best you can do is mercilessly mock their pretensions to high holy hell, preferably in front of an audience, until some tiny illumination of self-preservation sparks in their limbic chimp systems and they sulk off to lick their ego wounds rather than face the psychic torture of further debasement on a public stage. Even the most blockheaded deluded dumbass will think twice about shrieking his or her stupidities when Total Ridicule is the only reward.


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WHY: My resolution for 2013 is to downsize everything from my ass to my handbag, but if you were here to witness what I just inhaled then we'd agree that the latter is a more realistic goal at this point.
Now don't get me wrong, I love a big bag that can house enough tampons to soak up a bleeding village, but all the extra bullsh-t of receipts and keys and lipsticks are weighing down heavy on my shoulders. So before I start walking with a pimp limp it's time to switch things up, and this gorgeous "double date" bag from Kara is the answer
The shape, the cool compartments, the exposed zipper detail, the lux pebbled leather, I mean, I could go on about all the things I love about it. So instead I'll just shut up and buy it before you beat me to it.
(Note from Lainey: Sasha's Into It articles are NOT paid endorsements. Paid endorsements on LaineyGossip.com are always clearly marked. These are straight up Sasha obsessions.)


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Olga Khazan* reports on surveys that find women bosses are seen as capable as their male counterparts but they see themselves as less effective than men.
The thing to blame if you think people don't like it when women are in charge is "role congruity."
It's the theory that the most primitive parts of our brain continue to dictate our ideas about gender roles, with the man setting the rules of cave-house and forging the path to the mammoth den while the woman sticks to just nurturing things.
Thus, when a woman steps into a leadership role, it's supposed to trigger a "gender-role violation" that, consciously or not, stirs us to see her as less capable.
This phenomenon has been supported by research.
One study, in 1990, found that female leaders were given more negative and less positive feedback than male leaders, even though they offered the same suggestions and arguments.
In 2003, a group of business-school students were divided into two groups: Half were told that a fictional entrepreneur's name was Heidi; the other half that it was Howard.
Though the students said that Heidi and Howard were both competent and worthy of respect, "Heidi was seen as selfish and not the type of person you would want to hire or work for."
But that was two decades ago.
Since then, women have made some, but not a lot, of strides as they scuttle across the Minefield of Success and Likability.
As my former colleague Eleanor Barkhorn pointed out, in 2011, a study of 60,000 people published in Human Relations found that "people who actually had female managers did not give them lower ratings than people who had male managers."
The rub? "Of the 46 per cent of respondents who expressed a preference for their boss's gender, 72 per cent said they wanted a male manager."
In other words, people viewed the female bosses like Chipotle customers view a mildly botched burrito order—fine in the end, just not exactly what they wanted. Not exactly the story of the triumph of feminism.
To help sort through some of these conflicting findings, researchers from Florida International University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte recently conducted a meta-analysis, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, of 99 studies that examined perceptions of female leaders.
They found that while male leaders were more likely to rate themselves as more effective than the female leaders were, other people were actually more likely to rate the female leaders as more effective.
When the researchers combined the effect sizes for the self-ratings and the ratings of others, the gender difference in effectiveness evened out to approximately zero.
This backs the recent Atlantic magazine article by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, which documented how women consistently underestimate their skills and potential, while men tend to overstate them.
Meanwhile, men are still paid more for doing the same work and are much better represented in c-suites and in Congress.
"These findings are surprising given that men on average continue to be paid more and advance into higher managerial levels than women," one of the current study authors, Samantha C. Paustian-Underdahl, said in a statement.
"Future research needs to examine why women are seen as equally (or more) effective leaders than men, yet are not being rewarded in the same ways."
The good news here is that Paustian-Underdahl's analysis suggests attitudes toward female leaders are changing—there was a tendency for the later studies examined to have a rosier view of the female leaders, but the effect wasn't significant.
It also hints that the leadership needs of organizations are shifting, too. Now that so many of us are white-collar pixel-pushers working across cultures and time-zones, there's less of a need for commandeering foremen and more of a need for open, collaborative, "feminine" bosses gently nudging us to greatness.
As another meta-analysis from 2011 put it, "Leadership now, more than in the past, appears to incorporate more feminine relational qualities, such as sensitivity, warmth, and understanding."
But this isn't a total slam-dunk for ambitious women. It seems that what really matters for female leaders is not whether they are "successful," but how they behave in their role. And when they behave more like men, female leaders haven't made nearly as much progress as this study might imply.
As the Clayman Institute sociologist and Lean In researcher Marianne Cooper points out in the Harvard Business Review, "Scientific research also tells us that male and female leaders are liked equally when behaving participatively (i.e. including subordinates in decision making).
But when acting authoritatively, women leaders are disliked much more than men.
To be clear, it is not that women are always disliked more than men when they are successful, but that they are often penalized when they behave in ways that violate gender stereotypes."
And indeed, Paustian-Underdahl and her co-authors also found that the type of workplace made a difference: Men were seen as more effective in male-dominated settings, such as government work, while women were viewed as more capable within female-dominated industries, like education.
The current study also measured "effectiveness," not likability, and the researchers defined "effectiveness" as any one of the following: "performance or leadership ability; ratings of satisfaction with leaders or satisfaction with leaders' performance; coding or counting of effective leadership behaviors; or measures of organisational productivity or group performance."
You could be satisfied that a leader has fostered organisational productivity, while still believing that she's a shrill bitch.
So while authoritative female leaders might still be far from being well-liked, it's a pretty big deal to know that female bosses in general are viewed as just as effective—and sometimes more so.
It should at least be enough to refute any latent sexist claims that we're better suited to tending the cave fire. And it should definitely help those self-effacing female leaders stand a little taller.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected].
*Olga Khazan is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World.
This article first appeared in The Atlantic.


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Friends Season 3 Episode 21 : The One With A Chick And A Duck
Monica considers a dream job in Pete's new restaurant, but Phoebe fears there is more to the deal. Joey and Chandler adopt a baby chick and a duck. Ross misses a panel for the Discovery Channel to help Rachel, who may have a broken rib.
Episode Guide
Season 01
Season 02
Season 03
Season 04
Season 05
Season 06
Season 07
Season 08
Season 09
Season 10


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Rob Diaz de Villegas WFSU-TV
Wednesday, March 19 at 8 PM on WFSU-TV, catch the broadcast premiere of the new In the Grass, On the Reef documentary: Oyster Doctors.
Lately I've been preoccupied with wrapping up the National Science Foundation grant that funds a lot of what appears on this blog, and thinking about the future of the project. The last major piece of funded content is our latest documentary, Oyster Doctors, chronicling four years of research conducted by Dr. Randall Hughes and Dr. David Kimbro. On the one hand, the show is about learning how coastal ecosystems work. And it's about how the inner workings of salt marshes, oyster reefs, and seagrass beds provide people with jobs, clean water, and protection from erosion and storm surge. But it's as much about the ecologists as it is about the ecology.
Randall and David, and their graduate students- Tanya Rogers, Hanna Garland, and Althea Moore– are people who get inspired to pursue a line of research. They get excited by an idea, like predators affecting prey more through fear than through their eating them. They get excited about places. David gets geeked out about predatory snails on Bay Mouth Bar. Hanna falls in love with Apalachicola and wants to figure out its oyster problem. Randall makes observations about things she sees in St. Joseph Bay marshes and it sets her on a path. In one case, that path led her to the video above.
Randall's interest in black mangroves has unfolded before our eyes on this blog, starting in 2010. These trees have a range that ends to the south and east of here, yet here they were by her study sites. To learn more, she started experiments. Our Oyster Doctor premiere events on March 8 gave her a reason to come down from Massachusetts (she left the FSU Coastal & Marine Lab in January of 2013) and check on her mangrove experiments. These experiments are growing away in the St. Joseph Bay State Buffer Preserve. One of our premiere events was a walking tour of the Buffer and a visit to the experiment site. One reason the trees have been spreading in northern Gulf marshes are the warmer winters we'd been having in recent years. Recent cold snaps let Randall (and a group of interested parties) better see how certain sets of trees in her experiment might survive up here. And so, as we finished the show, which has its section on the mangrove research, we went right back into the field and gained a little extra knowledge. Nature's inner workings never stop unfolding.
In the coming months, we'll get more posts detailing Randall and David's findings in the studies we've been following. And then… well, certainly more EcoAdventures. Through those we can explore all of our area, connecting forests with swamps with rivers and back to the coasts, where this project was born. As people signed up for the premiere and its associated events, we left a spot for people to tell us about their connection to our local wild spaces. I'll be looking those over as we move forward. I love having a window into what all of you care about. Likewise, this blog has a comments section! Tell us what gets you excited about the outdoors, what you'd like to see more of, what's not being covered?
Follow us on Twitter @wfsuIGOR


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The perfect make-ahead dessert for your next gathering, these Individual No-Bake Banana Split Cakes will be a delicious hit.
I have been making a version of this cake for the past 20 years. However, I've always made it in a 9 x 13 pan. I finally decided to streamline the recipe and serve it in individual portions. Since this cake was always something I would normally make for a party, it just made more sense to put it together this way. It's so much easier to serve. And cuter too.
Nothing falls apart, it tastes great and believe it or not, it's not overly sweet. The oven also never goes on!
This cake gets a walnut crust just because it tastes so much better…more complex. The crust does not need baking, chilling it in the refrigerator keeps it all intact. If you have a nut allergy you could make a graham cracker crust using the same method. It works well too.
I bought this little wooden tamper originally to make my amazing mojitos. However, I find I use this tool for so many baking and cooking projects as well. It worked especially well flattening the crusts in the bottom of the glasses.
Perfect for all your summer entertaining!
Like this Individual No-Bake Banana Split Cake recipe? PIN IT!
Individual No-Bake Banana Split Cakes
- 1-3/4 cups walnuts
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup butter, melted
- 12 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 (20 ounce) can crushed pineapple, drained but reserve the juice
- 4-5 bananas sliced into 96 sliced rounds
- 1 box (3.4 oz) instant vanilla pudding mix
- 1-3/4 cups whole milk
- 1 (16-ounce) container Cool Whip, thawed
- 12 whole Maraschino cherries
- walnut pieces for garnish
- In a the bowl of a food processor, add walnuts and sugar. Process into crumbs. Add melted butter and process until smooth (will be wet). Divide walnut mixture evenly among twelve 8 oz plastic cups. Flatten crust on bottom with a tamper or the back of a spoon. Place in the refrigerator while you are making the fillings.
- Beat together cream cheese and sugar until incorporated. Place mixture in a Ziploc bag and place in refrigerator until ready to use. (I put in a Ziploc bag so that I could just cut off the corner and pipe it in. Much easier this way.)
- Drain pineapple juice into a bowl and toss juice with banana slices to keep them from browning. Set crushed pineapple aside.
- Combine instant pudding mix and cold milk. Whisk for two minutes. Place in refrigerator for 15 minutes until set.
- Once everything is made and ready to go, remove cups with crust from the refrigerator. Pipe in cream cheese layer, dividing evenly among the cups. Place pineapple on top of the cream cheese layer, divide evenly. Add four slices of banana on top of the pineapple to each cup. Divide pudding evenly among all cups. Add another 4 slices of banana . Top with Cool Whip, a Maraschino cherry and walnuts.
- Refrigerate 3-4 hours before serving.
If you try a recipe, please use the hashtag #NOBLEPIG on INSTAGRAM so we can see what you've made. FOLLOW Noble Pig ON FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST | TWITTER to keep up with all our latest recipes.


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The Other Me
Fifteen-year-old Treasa Prescott thinks she's an alien. She doesn't fit in with the preppy South African private school crowd and feels claustrophobic in her own skin. Treasa is worried she might spend life as a social pariah when she meets Gabriel du Preez. Gabriel plays the piano better than Beethoven, has a black belt in karate, and would look good wearing a garbage bag. Treasa thinks he's perfect. It might even be love, as long as Gabriel doesn't find out she's a freak. As Treasa spends time with Gabriel, she realizes she might not love him as much as she wants to be him, and that the reason she feels uncomfortable in her skin might have less to do with extra-terrestrial origins and more to do with being born in the wrong body. But Gabriel is not the perfect boy Treasa imagines. He harbors dark secrets and self-destructive tendencies. Still, Treasa might be able to accept Gabriel's baggage if he can accept who she longs to be.


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I recently said that I would write a blog series about Google apps accessibility, providing some hints and caveats when it comes to using Google products such as GMail, Docs, and Drive in a web browser.
However, when I researched this topic further, I realized that the documentation Google provide on each of their products for screen reader users is actually quite comprehensive. So, instead of repeating what they already said, I'm going to provide some high-level tips and tricks, and links to the relevant documentation so you can look the relevant information up yourself if you need to.
There is really not much difference between Google Drive, GMail and the other consumer-related products and the enterprise-level offerings called Google Apps for Business. All of them are based on the same technology base. The good thing is that there is also no way for administrators to turn accessibility off entirely when they administrate the Google Apps for Business setup for their company. And unless they mess with default settings, themes and other low-vision features should also work in both end user and enterprise environments.
A basic rule: Know your assistive technology! 🔗
This is one thing I notice pretty often when I start explaining certain web-related stuff to people, be they screen reader users or users of other assistive technologies. It is vital for your personal, but even more your professional life, to know your assistive technology! As a screen reader user, just getting around a page by tabbing simply isn't enough to get around complex web applications efficiently and deal with stuff in a timely fashion. You need to be familiar with concepts such as the difference between a virtual document (or virtual buffer or browse mode document) and the forms or focus mode of your screen reader, especially when on Windows. You need to know at least some quick navigation commands available in most browse/virtual mode scenarios. You should also be familiar with what landmarks are to navigate to certain sections of a page. If you just read this and don't know what I was talking about, consult your screen reader manual and key stroke reference now! If you are a person who requires training to memorize these things and isn't good at self-paced learning this, go get help and training for this, especially in professional environments. You will be much more proficient afterwards and provide much better services. And besides, it'll make you feel better because you will have a feeling of greater accomplishment and less frustrations. I promise!
Now with that out of the way, let's move on to some specific accessibility info, shall we?
GMail 🔗
One of the most used things you'l be using is GMail. If you want to use a desktop or mobile e-mail client because that is easiest for you, you can do so! Talk to your administrator if you're in a corporate or educational environment, or simply set up your GMail account in your preferred client. Today, most clients even won't require you to enter an IMAP or SMTP server any more, because they know what servers they need to talk to for GMail. So unless your administrator has turned off IMAP and SMTP access, which they most likely haven't, you should be able to just use your preferred client of choice. Only if you want to add server-side e-mail filters and change other settings will you then need to enter the web interface.
If you want to, or have to, use the web interface, don't bother with the basic HTML view. It is so stripped down in functionality that the experience by today's standards is less than pleasant. Instead, familiarize yourself with the GMail guide for screen reader users, and also have a look at the shortcuts for GMail. Note that the latter will only work if your screen reader's browse or virtual mode is turned off. If you're a screen reader user, experiment with which way works better for you, browse/virtual mode or non-virtual mode.
Personally, I found the usability of GMail quite improved in recent months compared to earlier times. I particularly am fond of the conversation threading capabilities and the power of the search which can also be applied to filters.
Note that in some documentation, it is said that the chat portion of GMail is not accessible. However, I found that this seems to be outdated information, since the above guide very well states that Chat works, and describes some of its features. Best way to find out: Try it!
Contacts 🔗
Contacts are accessible on the web, too, but again you can use your e-mail client's capabilities or extension to sync your contacts through that as well.
Calendar 🔗
Google Calendar's Agenda View can be used with screen readers on the web, but it, too, allows access from desktop or mobile CalDav clients as well. The Google Calendar guide for screen reader users and Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Calendar provide the relevant info.
Google Docs and Sites 🔗
This is probably the most complicated suite of the Google offerings, but don't fear, they are accessible and you can actually work with them nowadays. For this to work best, Google recommends to use either JAWS or NVDA with Firefox, or IE, or Chrome + ChromeVox. I tested, and while Safari and VoiceOver on OS X also provided some feedback, the experience wasn't as polished as one would hope. So if you're on the Mac, using Google Chrome and ChromeVox is probably your best bet.
Also, all of these apps work best if you do not rely on virtual/browse modes when on Windows. In NVDA, it's easy to just turn it off by pressing NVDA+Space. For JAWS, the shortcut is JAWSKey+Z. Bt since this has multiple settings, consult your JAWS manual to make this setting permanent for the Google Drive domain.
The documentation on Drive is extensive. I suggest to start at this hub and work your way through all linked documentation top to bottom. It's a lot at first, but you'll quickly get around and grasp the concepts, which are pretty consistent throughout.
Once you're ready to dive into Docs, Sheets, Slides and the other office suite apps, use the Docs Getting Started document as a springboard to all the others and the in-depth documentation on Docs itself.
One note, in some places, it is said that creating forms is not accessible yet. However, since there is documentation on that, too, those documents stating that creating forms isn't accessible yet are out of date. One of those, among other things, is the Administrator Guide to Apps Accessibility.
I found that creating and working in documents and spreadsheets works amazingly well already. There are some problems sometimes with read-only documents which I've made the Docs team aware of, but since these are sometimes hard to reproduce, it may need some more time before this works a bit better. I found that, if you get stuck, alt-tabbing out of and back into your browser often clears things up. Sometimes, it might even be enough to just open the menu bar by pressing the Alt key.
Closing remarks 🔗
Like with any other office productivity suite, Google Docs is a pretty involved product. In a sense, it's not less feature-rich than a desktop office suite of programs, only that it runs in a web browser. So in order to effectively use Google Apps, it cannot be said enough: Know your browser, and know your assistive technology! Just tabbing around won't get you very far!
If you need more information not linked to above, here's the entry page for all things Google accessibility in any of their apps, devices and services. From here, most of the other pages I mention above can also be found.
And one more piece of advice: If you know you'll be switching to Google Apps in the future in your company or government or educational institution, and want to get a head start, get yourself a GMail account if you don't have one. Once you have that, all of Google Drive, Docs, and others, are available to you as well to play around with. There's no better way than creating a safe environment and play around with it! Remember, it's only a web application, you can't break any machines by using it! And if you do, you're up for some great reward from Google! 🙂
After some requests, I also produced a little audio demo (about 40 minutes) where I demonstrate a few Gmail, Drive and Docs features.


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Startup showdown: The winners
More than 30 teams battled it out at the Rice Business Plan Competition for $800,000 in cash and seed money. Meet the 7 teams that dazzled the judges.
School: Carnegie Mellon University
In 2005, patent attorney and electrical engineer Jeffrey Mullen, CEO of Dynamics, had an idea that he believed would transform the credit card industry. Instead of programming credit cards' magnetic stripes to one identification number, what if companies were able to make a stripe that would support a changing number? In addition to reducing identity theft, such technology would allow credit card users to combine multiple cards on one piece of plastic, shifting their spending preferences for each transaction at the push of a button.
Credit card companies have been trying to refine their system for decades using PIN numbers and RFID chips, but haven't had much luck. With Mullen's technology, merchants wouldn't need to replace their credit card machines, which has been a major obstacle in the past.
"My initial takeaway was, 'Wow,'" says Rice judge and Compaq co-founder Rod Canion.
The Pittsburgh-based company already has seven full-time employees and is working with an undisclosed number of U.S. banks to bring its technology to market. Dynamics has also worked with venture capital firms, but Mullen declined to reveal how much capital it has already raised.
Dynamics took the competition's first place prize of $20,000 in cash and $305,000 in investments and services. In addition, the company landed the prestigious $100,000 Technology Award from Opportunity Houston (which it can collect only if it moves from Pittsburgh to Houston) and the coveted $125,000 investment prize from the GOOSE Society of Texas.
"The cash influx can expedite our various efforts," Mullen says.
Mullen's next goal is to compete in and win Moot Corp, an invitation-only business plan competition at the University of Texas at Austin that takes place in early May. -Emily Maltby
NEXT: Putting stars in NASA's eyes
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